A forum for beginners and members of other Buddhist traditions to ask questions about Theravāda (The Way of the Elders). Responses require moderator approval before they are visible in order to double-check alignment to Theravāda orthodoxy.

I remember reading how after the attainment of nibbana, the arahant remembers all his past lives, is that correct? Does he continue to remember them after parinibbana? Is there anywhere said does the bhavanga/ citta exists after parinibbana? Buddha says that that nibbana is the supreme happiness, but is that happiness alse there after parinibbana?

.[As above (in SN 22.109):] "And when, monks, a monk, having seen as they really are the arising and the passing away, the attractiveness and the danger, and the deliverance from the five groups of clinging, is released without clinging, he, monks, is called a monk in whom the cankers are destroyed, who has lived the life to perfection, done what had to be done, put down the burden, gained the highest goal, worn through the fetters of rebirth, and is liberated by perfect insight."[1]

There is no more becoming after the death of an arahant because all the conditions for rebirth have been extinguished.

Retro is correct when he says the question you pose is unanswerable.

.Of the discourses here, SN 44.1 and SN 44.10 are special cases. SN 44.1 focuses specifically on the questions that try to describe the status of the Tathagata after death, and explains that, having been released from the classification of the aggregates, the Tathagata defies description, in the same way that the sands of the river Ganges cannot be numbered, and the waters of the oceans cannot be calculated in gallons. The Commentary to this passage tries to fathom the Tathagata's infathomability, but its attempt is controversial.http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Buddha says that the twelve ayatanas (and therefore the five skhandas too) are the All, and that nothing beyong the All can be described or explained. Yet, he describes nibbana as supreme happiness. Is then nibbana within the All, but the parinibbana beyond?

Also, even though the intellect (manas) is the sixth ayatana, and therefore within the All, elsewhere the Tipitaka says that there is a type of consciousness (vinnana), "without features" (anidassanam) - that is beyong the All, but consciousness is action of the intellect, and those are then two contradictory statements. What is the explanation of this?

And finally, I want to ask for an explanation about some points of the awakened mind and the plane of unconscious beings. Firstly, I want to ask is the nibbana same as the stopping of sankhara? Secondly, is there any explanation of the asannasatta deva loka as to why are persons born in there? There they are born only with the body, only with the first skandha, meaning that to be born there, they previously had to be in a state where they have calmed the cittasankharas, where they have achieved the mentioned consciousness without features, and gone beyond the All, is that right? If so, why are they born there, instead of attaining parinibbana? Also, if it is true that by stopping cittasankharas one enters nibbana, being that asannasatta devas by definition don't have cittasankharas, that means that they are in nibbana, and that after death, they should attain parinibbana, and not be reborn, but Buddha says that after dying the asannasatta devas do not attain parinibbana, but are instead born in the lower planes- how is that explained?

Loppon Namdrol/Malcolm: "No, actually it does. The Sabbasutta is just a description of the twelve āyatanas. The twelve āyatanas contain all conditioned and unconditioned phenomena, including the supreme Dharma, nirvana.

That is it. There are no phenomena taught in any buddhist teachings that can go beyond this list. The dharma āyatana contains the aggregates of sensation, ideation and formations (vedanasamjñā̄saṃskaraskandha), as well as space and the two kinds of cessation. When the twelve āyatanas are broken out in to the eighteen dhātus, the dharma āyatana changes its name to the dharmadhātu. Mano āyatana, the mind ayatanā is the aggregate of consciousness, vijñāna skandha, and the ten material āyatanas, eye, form, etc, are the rūpaskandha.

...

Well, that may be how Theravadins approach that sutta -- but some tendencies in Theravada are slightly eternalist. We also have that Sutra in the Agamas, and the way the twelve āyatanas are described by Vasubandhu and the way I have outlined this is completely normal and consistent with that sutra. Nirvana, for stream enterers and so on, is an object of their consciousnesses since it is included in the dharmāyatana/dhātu.

There are no phenomena that lie outside the twelve āyatanas."

Geoff: "It's (nirvana) a mental object of the sixth consciousness. The path has a purpose, and that purpose for śrāvakas (and bodhisattvas as well) includes the elimination of the fetters. Thus, with the fruition attainments there is the knowledge (ñāṇa) of extinguishment (nibbāna) of fetters, also called the knowledge of elimination (khayeñāṇa) of fetters, etc. Without such elimination there is no awakening (bodhi). This isn't controversial."

"It's the object of a supramundane cognition (lokuttaracitta), yes."

"It's implicit in terms such as the cognition of cessation (nirodhasaññā), etc."